u/Gold_Buffalo_5376

Hey all,

To provide some necessary context since this topic concerns culture, I’m a Melbourne born and raised woman in my late-20s.

Lately I’ve noticed, and become increasingly bothered by, what feels like really dry conversations between myself and friends from high school (all Melbourne born women as well). Whenever we get together our conversations mostly revolve around our careers, which I understand is part of adulthood, however it always has this tone of a civilised discussion where we’re taking turns to speak rather than fun, unstructured banter. I find my attempts to inject humour or steer the conversation in a banter-y direction fall flat. For example, one time my friend was talking about her irresponsible colleague whose female cat keeps roaming the streets getting impregnated by different cats. I said “wow, sl*t!” but no one laughed and joined in, but just kept discussing it without cracking any jokes. Another time while having brunch I mentioned I was going to a concert the next day and no one asked who I was seeing. Instead, my friend started telling us all about the errands she was going to run after our brunch which everyone seemed more interested in.

This all makes me wonder if this is the typical friendship dynamic in Australia and friends feel boring, or if it’s normal and I need to adjust my expectations?

Sounds like a stupid question, I know.

I’m 23 currently working for a tech company doing administration for their finance, sales, and purchasing departments but getting paid barely anything for it and have no opportunities for growth unfortunately. I have a psychology degree and would like to leverage that in some way, perhaps government. I just want to join an industry where I can keep growing.

I’d like to dive in and commit to job searching full-time so I can find something better ASAP but it feels incompatible with my full-time work. I can apply to jobs and send emails in the evenings and weekends, but interviews will need to happen during business hours. Given the lousy job market I’d like to maximise my odds of getting a job by attending as many interviews as possible but how would I take that amount of time off and sporadically i.e. whenever any interview is scheduled? Is my only option to resign so I can commit to the search 100%? I would be willing to resign if necessary but without another job lined up I’d be free falling. I do have the safety net of living at home with my parents thankfully and they would allow me to be jobless for a short period of time as long as I’m searching for something else.

Does anyone have any advice or anecdotal experience they can share? How on earth does one job search properly and attend interviews whilst working full-time?

As an aside, I’m currently on leave from a Masters. I was doing well but the course is pricey so I stepped back to reassess what jobs I can get before putting myself in that much HECS debt.